Liverpool drug gangs move in on cannabis trade – special ECHO report

LIVERPOOL crime families have turned their attentions to growing and dealing their own cannabis on a mass scale.

LIVERPOOL crime families have turned their attentions to growing and dealing their own cannabis on a mass scale.

Where cannabis farms in Merseyside were once principally the business of Far Eastern gangs, now local gangsters have muscled them out as they look to clean up the huge profits which can be made for themselves.

Described by one police drug expert as “the ATM for organised crime”, many see cannabis as a harmless drug, still associating it with “summers of love” and hippies at Woodstock.

But the cannabis on the streets of Liverpool today is a world away from the joints rolled as Jimi Hendrix jammed on stage.

Said to be the most prevalent illegal drug in the UK the strength of it, the way it is produced and the profits which can be made have turned it into big business for crooks in recent years. As revealed in the ECHO on Saturday, a spate of shootings across north Liverpool last week is thought to be down to rival dealers protecting their own turf or trying to move in on someone else’s.

Industrial-scale cannabis farms are now being turned up by police in Merseyside at the rate of around two a week.

Farms were found under railway arches, in abandoned offices, disused clubs, empty cinemas, a chip shop, barns and garages.

Crime syndicates who rule housing estates have seen what money can be made and recruited families – often those living on the breadline – to set up small-scale cannabis farms in their homes.

They take all the risk of the police coming crashing through their front door while the gangsters at the top take all the rewards.

“It provides the ready cash which goes towards the bigger, riskier stuff like Class A drugs and firearms.

“We are finding more and more bedrooms with 20 to 50 plants in and the people we catch are claiming they are heavy smokers and it is for personal use – which can be difficult to disprove.

“Now that amount of plant can generate a fair amount of cash – 25 plants could make you £40,000 a year on conservative estimates.

“A cannabis smoker could have 10 spliffs a day for the rest of his life from just five plants if he kept them properly with four or five yields a year, so there is a big difference there.”

Assistant Chief Constable Colin Matthews, a former drugs squad officer in his younger days, said the explosion of cannabis farms in Merseyside can be linked back to the decision in 2004 to downgrade the drug from a Class B to a Class C.

ACC Matthews said: “Uncovering large-scale cannabis cultivation has become a big part of our job now.

“Either through intelligence-led operations or through general policing, we find ourselves coming across commercial cultivation sites probably a couple of times a week now.

“When we moved cannabis to a Class C drug classification, it sent out completely the wrong message.

“Doing that created the conditions where large-scale cultivation of cannabis suddenly became much more profitable and attractive.

“Ever since then, we have been trying to regain the ground we lost.”

In the same year came another tipping point for cannabis – the Morecambe Bay cockle-picking disaster.

With cockling in the spotlight, gangmasters who had trafficked people from the Far East to pick from the seabeds suddenly had an army of workers but no work to give them.

They were instead put to work in cannabis farms, then run by Triad and other Oriental gangs.

Det Insp Stupples said: “2004 was a pivotal point.

“After the Morecambe Bay cockling disaster, there was a large Far Eastern workforce here with no work so they were put to work growing cannabis.

“Before then, we had nowhere near the same kind of large-scale cannabis production which we have now.

“But now the situation has changed. We do not see the Far East crime groups getting as involved anymore.

“We have the oldest Chinese community in the UK in Liverpool so there are Chinese gangsters who are locally born and bred.

“Now our crime groups do not let anyone muscle in on their turf, so you can only think there was some sort of agreement in place which let the Chinese get on with their cannabis farms.

“Either they would pay for our local lads to protect their business or cut them in on the profits so they would be left alone.

“But now the locals have realised how much money there is to be made and moved in.

“We see very few Far Eastern-run cannabis farms now.

“They will not have given up, they will have just gone elsewhere where there is less hassle.

“We now have organised crime groups in our housing estates who are getting the local scallies to fill their bedrooms or empty rooms in their houses with cannabis plants.

“Although the growing sites are split up, it is all going into the same pot.

“If you are the head of that family, you finance it but stay well away while it is grown and sold and then take all the profits.”

Even before the spate of shootings last week in Anfield, Walton, Tuebrook and Fazakerley, Merseyside Police’s Matrix team were already looking at the links between firearms discharges and the production of cannabis.

Detective Superintendent Richie Davies, from Matrix, said: “It would seem now more of our organised crime groups are into the business of growing cannabis crops.

“Then we have other groups who have made it their business to rip off those crops or the money which comes from them.

“They are just ripping each other off and that brings firearms into the picture, because one group wants to protect themselves and the other want to use them to threaten.

“The growing and selling of cannabis is easier graft than getting involved with your Class As and ripping it off is even easier.

“Rather than wait around and grow the stuff themselves and wait for it to go through the whole process of growing, harvesting, drying, packing and selling, it is easier to go in when it is packed and ready for sale or when it has been sold and the money is there and just take it.”

Police have directly linked 10 firearms incidents to the rip-off of cannabis farms or their profits since April 2010.

Several more are suspected to be linked – although those involved do not exactly want to talk about it.

Det Supt Davies added: “This is not harmless, it is not ‘just a bit of cannabis’.

“It is organised crime and it is bringing firearms onto our streets.

“We believe the rise in shootings we have seen in Sefton, particularly around Bootle, is down to rival factions ripping off each other over the sale of cannabis.

“Matrix was set up to deal with gun crime but with the links between cannabis cultivation, taxings and firearm discharges, we have to focus our attention on getting to the root of the problem.”

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